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Sandra Pupatello’s top selling point as an Ontario Liberal leadership candidate is that she offers the best chance for the party to retain power. More likely, though, the party will lose an election if one is held anytime soon, regardless of who succeeds Premier Dalton McGuinty.

Public anger is palpable, in the aftermath of familiar scandals — ORNGE, the cancellation of unpopular gas plants in Liberal ridings just in time for the 2011 election, and the proroguing of the legislature last October.

The best hope for Liberals, and the best course for the province, is to avoid another $100-million election that will most likely produce yet another minority government.

The first priority for the new premier should be to recall the legislature and try to make it work.

Kathleen Wynne is best positioned to do so. She has a seat, unlike Pupatello, who has to engineer a byelection and win it.

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Finance Minister Dwight Duncan is ready to resign his Windsor seat for her. But there is no guarantee that this cynical political ploy by the party establishment would not engender voter backlash.

The nightmare scenario for the Liberals would be that they would have sacrificed their ace finance minister for a leader who failed to win a seat.

Last year, the Liberals tried a similar ploy in Kitchener-Waterloo, appointing Tory MPP Elizabeth Witmer chair of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board. Angry voters turned against both the Conservatives and the Liberals and elected a New Democrat.

There’s also precedent for a party leader failing to win a riding. In 2007, John Tory lost in Don Valley West (to Wynne), a defeat he never recovered from and had to resign.

Pupatello hopes to win the byelection but if she doesn’t, she would be finished — and so would the Liberals, and take years to recover from the debacle.

There’s no such risk with Wynne.

She could even make the legislature work. She listens to others. She is respectful of her adversaries, unlike Pupatello who had a reputation as an attack dog in the legislature.

Tory Leader Tim Hudak is not likely to co-operate. He is cast in the Republican mode, putting his party’s partisan interests well ahead of those of the public. NDP Leader Andrea Howarth is more likely to.

If she doesn’t, Wynne would have at least demonstrated that she sincerely tried.

Wynne holds two masters degrees. And she trained as a mediator at Harvard. She entered public life in the 1990s to oppose the policies of Mike Harris. A former school trustee, she is a formidable campaigner. Besides vanquishing John Tory, she defeated veteran cabinet minister David Turnbull in 2003.

There’s the not-so-unspoken issue of her being a lesbian. She has been refreshingly forthright about it, ever since she came out 23 years ago, when doing so was not the norm. Her private life is a non-issue.

Another rap against her is that she is from Toronto, whereas historically premiers have come from outside the city. This geographical quirk needs to be challenged, not accepted, thereby disenfranchising Torontonians from ever becoming premier. Besides, Pupatello no longer lives in Windsor; she works on Bay St., Toronto.

Wynne’s fiscal prudence combined with her social conscience would provide Ontarians with a clear alternative to Hudak’s divisive slash-and-burn policies. No Liberal leader can win by trying to be Hudak Lite, any more than Michael Ignatieff could by being Harper Lite. McGuinty learned that lesson as well in Kitchener-Waterloo by tacking hard right.

It is said that Pupatello is not tainted with recent government scandals, having quit politics in 2011. By that measure, Gerard Kennedy would be an ideal candidate, having been out of the provincial scene since 2006. He had nothing to do with such scandals as eHealth when Pupatello was a pivotal player at Queen’s Park.

Wynne stayed in the trenches and did a stellar job of running the ministries of education, transportation, municipal affairs, housing, aboriginal affairs, etc. No scandal ever touched her.

She distanced herself from the proroguing of the legislature and also McGuinty’s ham-fisted dealing with teachers.

Wynne has demonstrated a solid command of public policy. She does not peddle clichés. She offers a fine balance between fiscal prudence and addressing the social deficit of increasing inequality, which detracts from reaching our full economic potential.

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